Beshear says Kentucky foster care audit has ‘significant errors’ while OIG report shows progress

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said the state auditor's report about how Kentucky is failing foster kids has "significant errors and inaccuracies."

Kentucky Auditor Allison Ball's report found more than 300 foster kids stayed overnight in settings like office buildings, hotels, state parks, and community centers between January 2023 and October 2024. In some cases, kids faced abuse and trafficking risks.

"My concern is that those reports also violate core auditing principles. When you conduct an audit you have to give the agency that you are auditing a chance to comment on it because you might not have it all right. That wasn't done here," Beshear said during a Team Kentucky update Thursday.

"In fact, it was released to the press before it was even placed online and certainly no chance for us to review. And it contains errors that, if we'd had a chance, we would have been able to fix."

Beshear said a recent report from the Kentucky Finance Cabinet's Office of Inspector General found progress is being made in the foster care system. It said that because of the programs installed, kids staying in places like office buildings and hotels have decreased by 50% last year. In more than 50% of cases, it said kids stayed in those settings for 24 hours or less.

"The investigation by the office of inspector general was an independent study initiated over a year ago on Feb. 3, 2025. It gave a response for the cabinet and for DCBS to respond and that made the report better," Beshear said. "Our team is going to use this accurate information to better the care for foster children."

The governor said the report showed the Department of Community Based Services (DCBS) "prioritizes long-term, traditional placements for children in OOHC and that non-traditional placements are rare and only account for 1-2% of cases due to the specific needs of a child and a nationwide shortage of high acuity facilities that provide specialized care."

It also found that in more than 50% of Kentucky cases, the length of stay in NTP was 24 hours or less.

"It's unbelievable to me that the governor would minimize the suffering and trauma of over 300 Kentucky children who have experienced dangerous and ill-equipped placement stays over the past four years. One child experiencing this broken system is too many, let alone 304 of them," Ball said in a statement regarding Beshear's comments. "Our study utilize Beshear administration data, directly from his own data systems. If the governor's remarks mean that his own data can't be trusted, then we are seeing the emergence of another critical failure of leadership. Talk and excuses won't help these kids. The recommendations in our report will."

How we got here

The nontraditional placements, or NTPs, date back to 2022 and were subject of a WDRB investigation which showed some foster kids were staying overnight in the L&N building on West Broadway in downtown Louisville. The new report, released Monday morning by the Commonwealth Office of the Ombudsman, accused the Cabinet for Health and Family Services of "continued housing of vulnerable Kentucky children in state office buildings and other non-family or non-therapeutic based environments, a practice continuing for years despite CHFS promises to fix the problem."

In July 2023, CHFS first made the public aware of these placements, saying nearly 90 Kentucky foster children have slept on cots in government buildings and showering at YMCAs that year after not being placed in the care they need.

CHFS said at the time the kids are the most severe cases in the foster system, predominantly teenage boys. But the reasons for lack of placement range from a history of violence or fighting to intellectual disabilities. The first cases of kids staying in a social worker's office started in rural communities in 2022. By summer 2023, it'd become a frequent alternative when there weren't enough psychiatric residential treatment facility beds or a facility turned a child away.

"It was a very shocking story that sent shockwaves throughout Kentucky," Ball said Monday.

By August 2024, the placements had continued. State data obtained in public records requests showed 144 children had spent at least one night at a hotel or state office space from July 2022 to July 2023. And from then until February 2024, 137 more kids stayed in those places for a night or more, amounting to 281 children in less than two years.

In Louisville, the L&N building downtown was one of the identified places.

"There's not a lot that surprises me just because I don't think the community at large understands the severity of the situation and the importance of it," Rep. Sarah Stalker, D-Louisville, said at the time. "So I think people have to get super creative because obviously if we cannot find a placement for a child, we need to make sure that their basic needs are being met."

Typically, there were one to three kids statewide at a time staying in a temporary situation overnight for one to two days, CHFS. The most the department said it tracked for one child was 17 consecutive nights.

And in February 2025, Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Benton, filed Senate Bill 111 after a preliminary report from the Kentucky Office of the Ombudsman found that dozens of foster children stayed in office buildings over a four-month period in 2024 because there was nowhere else for them to go. The bill proposed a new psychiatric youth facility with 16 beds and pushed for two new places to be built for young girls, in central and western Kentucky, with the possibility of a third in northern Kentucky. Each would cost an estimated $45 million, he said.

But the bill failed to gain much traction and never reached the full House or Senate.